"This book is for pianists who wish to improvise. Many will be experienced performers - perhaps even veteran concert artists - who are nevertheless beginners at improvisation. This contradiction is a reflection of our educational system. Those who attend collegiate music schools spend nearly all time and effort on learning, perfecting, and reciting masterpieces from the standard repertoire. As far as I can remember, no one ever taught or advocated for improvisation during my decade as a student in music schools. Certainly no one ever improvised anything substantial in a concert (except for the jazz musicians, who were, I regret to say, a separate division and generally viewed with complete indifference by the classical community). Nor did any history professor mention that, long ago, improvisation was commonplace and indeed an indispensable skill for much of the daily activity of a working musician. I continue to dedicate a portion of my career to "perfecting and reciting" masterpieces of the repertoire, and teaching my students to do the same. That tradition is dear to me. Still, if I have one regret about my traditional education, it's that it wasn't traditional enough. We have forgotten that in the eighteenth century - those hundred years that form the bedrock of classical music - improvisation was a foundation of music training. Oddly, our discipline has discarded a practice that helped bring it into being. Perhaps it is time to retrieve it from the junk heap of history and give it a good dusting off. I love the legends of the improvisational powers of the masters: Bach creating elaborate fugues on the spot, or Beethoven humiliating Daniel Steibelt by riffing upon and thereby exposing the weakness of the latter's inferior tunes. The stories implied that these abilities were instances of inexplicable genius which we could admire in slack-jawed wonder but never emulate. But that isn't right. Bach could improvise fugues not because he was unique but because almost any properly-trained keyboard player in his day could. Even mediocre talents could improvise mediocre fugues. Bach was exceptionally good at something which pretty much everyone could do at a passable level. They could all do it because it was built into their musical thinking from the very beginning of their training"--

The second son of Johann Sebastian Bach, C.P.E. Bach was an important composer in his own right, as well as a writer and performer on keyboard instruments. He composed roughly a thousand works in all the leading genres of the period, with the exception of opera, and Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven all acknowledged his influence. He was also the author of a two-volume encyclopedic book about performance on keyboard instrument. C.P.E. Bach and his music have always been the subject of significant scholarship and publication but interest has sharply increased over the past two or three decades from performers as well as music historians. This volume incorporates important writings not only on the composer and his chief works but also on theoretical issues and performance questions. The focus throughout is on relatively recent scholarship otherwise available only in hard-to-access sources.

Free Play is about the inner sources of spontaneous creation. It is about why we create and what we learn when we do. It is about the flow of unhindered creative energy: the joy of making art in all its varied forms. An international bestseller and beloved classic, Free Play is an inspiring and provocative book, directed toward people in any field who want to contact, honor, and strengthen their own creative powers. It reveals how inspiration arises within us, how that inspiration may be blocked, derailed or obscured, and how finally it can be liberated—how we can be liberated—to speak or sing, write or paint, dance or play, with our own authentic voice. Stephen Nachmanovitch, a pioneer in free improvisation, integrates material from a wide variety of sources among the arts, sciences, and spiritual traditions of humanity, drawing on unusual quotes, amusing and illuminating anecdotes, and original metaphors. The whole enterprise of improvisation in life and art, of recovering free play and awakening creativity, is about being true to ourselves and our visions. Free Play brings us into direct, active contact with boundless creative energies that we may not even know we had.

Keyboard artists in the time of J.S. Bach were simultaneously performers, composers, and improvisers. By the twentieth century, however, the art of improvisation was all but lost. Today, vanishingly few classically-trained musicians can improvise with fluent, stylistic integrity. Many now question the system of training that leaves players dependent upon the printed page, and would welcome a new approach to musicianship that would enable modern performers to recapture the remarkable creative freedom of a bygone era. The Pianist's Guide to Historic Improvisation opens a pathway of musical discovery as the reader learns to improvise with confidence and joy. Useful as either a college-level textbook or a guide for independent study, the book is eminently practical. Author John Mortensen explains even the most complex ideas in a lucid, conversational tone, accompanied by hundreds of musical examples. Mortensen pairs every concept with hands-on exercises for step-by-step practice of each skill. Professional-level virtuosity is not required; players of moderate skill can manage the material. Suitable for professionals, conservatory students, and avid amateurs, The Pianist's Guide leads to mastery of improvisational techniques at the Baroque keyboard.

J. S. Bach's musician son explains the technique for performing eighteenth-century compositions, discussing fingering, embellishments, bass, and accompaniment

A most impressive 220-page edition of the first volume of "The Well-Tempered Clavier," these 24 preludes and 24 fugues were painstakingly researched over a period of 10 years, using the most important original manuscript sources. Baroque scholar Willard A. Palmer's thorough introduction discusses fugal construction, articulation and other aspects of performance interpretation. Volume I of "The Well-Tempered Clavier" has been updated with a new "look" to match Volume II. This essential masterpiece is a "must-have" for all pianists.

What sorts of processes were going through the mind of J.S. Bach as he improvised a fugue in three, four, or even six parts? And what sort of training equipped an organist of the early eighteenth century to practice the art of accompaniment and improvisation successfully? The practical method which linked keyboard technique, improvisation, performance, and composition in a continuum was the thoroughbass, the center of the Baroque musicians art. The Langloz Manuscript, originating in the era and proximity of Bach's region of activity, and containing the largest extant collection of figured bass fugues, provides a window into this very process, and demonstrates more clearly than any words can the method by which the art of thoroughbass provided a foundation for extemporised fugue. The present edition is the first publication of this manuscript.

A translation of Volume I of a major work by one of the leading music theorists of the century.